Learning to Appreciate Recycling: Look at All the Energy That Goes Into Remolding Tires

In an earlier post, I commented on how Japanese children at the school where I worked were taught to pitch in with recycling. But I failed to mention a rather strange counterpoint, emblematic of that country's bewildering contradictions: One day a horrific smell wafted over the campus. I went outside to investigate, and discovered that a farmer in the lot adjacent to the school was burning an enormous pile of tires. The wind carried the vile, black smoke all over the school and the playing grounds. I asked a teacher about this and he shrugged. "There is no place to put them," he said.

I've since learned tires can of course be re-molded and re-treaded. But I had no idea how labor- and energy-intensive it was until I saw this video. Those of you who are into molding will enjoy seeing how the mold comes apart/together around 3:15. I also dug watching how they remove the flashing, and that inflatable thingy that serves as the mold's core:

The amount of man-hours that goes into each tire, not to mention the one-hour-plus molding time, is staggering. But what I found most surprising was that despite all of that energy burned, re-molding is still 30 to 60% cheaper than creating the tire from scratch.

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2 Comments

That's why re-use is better than recycling if possible. That's what drove me to design ReTyre seating ( www.cmid.co.nz ) made from tyres with no processing to the tyre. That and disaster revival after the Christchurch Earthquakes (New Zealand).

Why surprised? New tyre production is tremendously energy consuming, it's the same process as you see here, only you have process the raw material and put a woven belt of steel in the middle of it.
Re-moulds have had a terrible reputation in the past (rightly so) companies like Insa Turbo in Spain have revolutionised the technology .
They are as safe as buying a new tyre now and much safer than part worns.
This is the only bit of recycling I'm truly convinced by!
Thanks,
Mike

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